Having a Mind and Being Conscious

Open to all—please register in advance at: havingamindconference@gmail.com

Thursday, July 3 – Salle Jäggi 4112 (MIS 04)

09:50 Welcoming address

10:00-11:20 Michelle Montague (University of Texas at Austin)
“Phenomenality, intentionality, and necessity”

Coffee break

11:40-13:00 Elisabetta Sacchi (San Raffaele University in Milan)
“Can the ‘psychological involvement thesis of mental content’ be accounted for without falling into psychologism?”

Lunch break

14:30-15:50 Alberto Voltolini (University of Turin)
“Awareness (of Awareness)”

Coffee break

16:10-17:30 Gregory Bochner (Collège de France)
“From Strong AI to the ‘Hard’ Problem of Other Minds”

Friday, July 4 – Salle Jäggi 4112 (MIS 04)

09:30-10:50 Daniel Stoljar (Australian National University)
“In What Sense is Consciousness First-personal?”

Coffee break

11:10-12:30 Preston Lennon (Rutgers University)
“Formats Are Consciously Experienced”

Lunch break

14:00-15:20 Robert Howell (Rice University)
“The Epistemic Significance of Acquaintance”

Coffee break

15:40-16:45 Round table: Katalin Balog (Rutgers University), Barry Loewer (Rutgers University), Donnchadh O’Conaill (independent researcher)
“Having a Mind and Being Conscious”

Organisers: Julien Bugnon (Université de Fribourg), Gregory Bochner (Collège de France)

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The conference will explore various issues concerning the relationship between what it is to have a mind and to be phenomenally conscious. Specifically, is the ability to form propositional attitudes (such as beliefs, desires, intentions, etc.) largely independent of the capacity to have phenomenal experiences? Or does an adequate understanding of that ability reveal that it is inextricably bound up with phenomenal consciousness?

We are interested in the significance that views of the relations between mental representation and phenomenal consciousness have for related issues in the epistemology of minds and the metaphysics of conscious subjects. These include (but are not limited to) the following:
– Is intentional content determined by the phenomenal character of experience? If so, what implications does this have for debates on externalism versus internalism regarding mental content? Moreover, how does the phenomenal character of experience connect to the first-person perspective seemingly conveyed by indexical thoughts?
– What role does our capacity for phenomenal consciousness play in our capacity to self-ascribe propositional attitudes? What about attitudes that are not phenomenally conscious, such as standing beliefs?
– What are the respective origins and contents of our concepts of ‘having a mind’ and ‘conscious subject’? Does one (or both) allow for borderline cases? Or are they, on the contrary, concepts that reflect sharp boundaries in the world? What implications do these concepts carry for the nature of conscious subjects or entities having a mind (e.g., can they be physical entities?) and for their identity conditions?